NHL's war of attrition now in season

St. Louis Blues' David Backes (42) is tended by trainer Ray Barile after the centre took a hit from Chicago Blackhawks defenceman Brent Seabrook in the third period in Game 2 of a first-round NHL hockey playoff series on Saturday, April 19, 2014, in St. Louis. Seabrook was assessed a game misconduct penalty for the play and the Blues scored the tying goal on the ensuing five-minute power play.

Photograph by: Chris Lee
, AP/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

VANCOUVER - ‘Tis the season, once more, to celebrate the things humans will do to one another, and to themselves, in order to climb over their opponents’ cold, dead corpses to the next round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Or if not corpses, exactly, then their brains. Or their testicles. Whatever seems to be getting in the way.

The circumstances vary, heroes and villains trade places from scene to scene -- Raffi Torres, thug to scoring star; Brent Seabrook, victim to perpetrator -- but the overriding theme rarely strays from the post-season motto: i.e., win the war of attrition, win the Cup.

Take the most graphic example to date. Not Boston Bruin forward Milan Lucic’s lift-and-separate pitchfork of Detroit defenceman Danny DeKeyser’s eggs, although that cowardly attack from behind was fairly ... uncomfortable to watch, for those who have ever had the chain-slip, bicycle-crossbar accident.

No, the most graphic was Chicago defenceman Brent Seabrook’s launch with his shoulder pad into the head of St. Louis captain David Backes, who didn’t see him coming and didn’t see much of anything for a few moments after that. (And won’t be seeing any action for a good while unless the Blues have lost their moral compass, or their copy of the NHL’s concussion protocol.) Adding to the general outrage, even after the National Hockey League slapped Seabrook with a possibly over-lenient three-game suspension, was audio of the hit’s aftermath, in which Seabrook’s defence partner Duncan Keith (or someone who sounds a lot like him) is saying “Wakey-wakey, Backes!” This, while the Blues’ leader is out on his feet, little birds circling his head, x’s where his eyes should be, his body only semi-upright because his heart is still going even after his brain has mostly quit, and because a Blues’ trainer has a hold of him.

Somewhere in the fog, Backes’s hockey instinct is telling him to fight whoever did this to him, but in his addled condition wrongly thinks it’s Jonathan Toews. And so Toews probably calls him a few choice names, and the Blackhawk captain, the good Winnipeg boy who two months ago was the toast of all Canada for his peerless play and sterling character while leading the Olympic team to glory in Sochi, is inevitably Suspect No. 2 in the search for whoever was chirping a concussed opponent.

“I didn't say anything really… I don't know what he was feeling or going through," Toews said at Monday morning’s skate prior to Game 3 in Chicago. “I guess you can kind of imagine seeing what he was like against the boards there. He asked me to fight so that's the only reason I started talking to him.

"Maybe some things were said in the heat of the moment. Most of that stuff goes unheard from the fans and the media. So it's (hard) to not regret some of the things that might have been said.”

But let us consider the various miscreants and victims here.

First Seabrook, who has been hit in the head, famously, with the potential for untold cerebral damage down the road, at least twice in the past, by James Wisniewski and Raffi Torres. If anyone should know better than to deliver the kind of blow he laid on Backes, it is Seabrook.

But then, Backes. Who could resist, given half a chance? Every coach would love a player like him on his team -- and most every fan -- but the Blues forward is, let’s face it, a ruthless, uncompromising bulldozer in his own right, always playing right on the edge of mayhem, more than occasionally stepping over it. Live by the sword ....

Two months after gaining extensive worldwide attention for his stray pooch-rescuing efforts in Sochi, at least until the U.S. team went down like dogs (unlovable ones) in a 5-0 bronze-medal surrender to the Finns, Backes has long since spent all that currency, not that it ever cut any ice with NHL opposition. So he cannot be terribly surprised when a Chicago team that the Blues have been systematically trying to run through the boards in the series rises up on its hind legs and attempts to take its own pound of flesh.

But then, Keith. Like Toews, a stalwart in two straight Olympic gold medal efforts for Canada, a former Norris Trophy winner, what the heck is he thinking, taunting a semi-conscious opponent?

And not only that, but chopping and hacking and spearing and just generally behaving like an ass in Game 2? Not that he hasn’t done it before -- you may recall the cheaper-than-cheap head shot he took at Daniel Sedin in March of 2012 that netted a suspension -- but for someone not noted for dropping his mitts when challenged, Keith is apt to find himself in a very vulnerable spot without Seabrook around to watch his back as this series goes on.

“Lots of things get said out on the ice in the course of a hockey game, especially in playoffs. I'm an emotional guy. It's an emotional game. I don't remember everything that gets said out there,” Keith said Monday morning. In other words, he said it.

And for good measure, “Wakey Wakey Backes” is now immortalized in block capital letters on the front of a tee-shirt advertised for sale by Trending T-Shirts (Your Home for Offensive T-Shirts) on the internet. Red only, $17. No doubt, all proceeds will be going to concussion research.

But then, the Blues. Does anyone seriously think that it is exclusively the Blackhawks verbally hitting below the belt, when St. Louis has on its roster not only Backes, but unreformed chirpaholic Max Lapierre and the ever-irritating Steve Ott?

But then, the whole concussion issue. Not just Backes’s obvious distress in St. Louis, but the accidental kneepad to the back of Steven Stamkos’s head in Tampa’s Game 3 loss to Montreal, the Lightning star’s obvious disorientation as he was helped to the bench, his return to the ice, his stated intention to play Game 4.

Does anyone remember: didn’t the NHL, at the height of the concussion scare, put out a strict protocol to be followed by all teams? It rings a bell -- no pun intended -- vaguely. But it appears to have been a knee-jerk reaction to a crisis, more than an actual intention to have it adhered to by any team that can’t afford to have a star player out for a big game.

But then, all the other head-scratching, game-changing calls that went the Habs’ way, and against Tampa, in Game 3, with a referee from Gatineau, Que., appointed to officiate his first-ever playoff game ... in Montreal. Good p.r. sense there, NHL. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, from the league’s perspective, nothing. Minor flesh wounds, all serving to raise the temperature of the playoffs. The only bad publicity is no publicity. Keep up the good work, everybody.

St. Louis Blues' David Backes (42) is tended by trainer Ray Barile after the centre took a hit from Chicago Blackhawks defenceman Brent Seabrook in the third period in Game 2 of a first-round NHL hockey playoff series on Saturday, April 19, 2014, in St. Louis. Seabrook was assessed a game misconduct penalty for the play and the Blues scored the tying goal on the ensuing five-minute power play.

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